"Prior to his two elegant essay collections, The Primary Colors (1994) and The Secondary Colors (1996), Theroux wrote push-the-envelope works of fiction. Now in his first novel in twenty years, a work that screams 'literary event,' Theroux takes up a signature theme, thwarted love. Eugene Eyestones is an erudite man of taste and refinement earning his keep by writing an intellectual yet nonetheless scandalous sex column for a Boston magazine published by the grotesquely fat and foul Minot Warholic.
"Laura, Warholic's homely, straw-thin, slutty, rock-and-roll-fanatic ex-wife, serves as gentlemanly Eugene's unlikely muse, while he dreams of Rapunzel, a fair lady working in a bakery. Weary of the anti-Semitic, racist, misogynist, and homophobic tirades and insults habitually spewed by his cartoonishly vituperative colleagues, Eugene goes on the road with obtuse Laura, touring America's grand spectrum of tackiness. Undeniably funny and compelling, linguistically and intellectually dazzling, as well as offensive and outrageously prolix, Theroux's spiky catchall satire of the myriad ills of contemporary culture and the divide between idealized love and unbridled lust grinds and thrashes its way to an obliterating conclusion." -Booklist
Alexander Theroux is the author of three highly regarded novels—Three Wogs, Darconville's Cat, and An Adultery—and of several books of essays, fables, and poetry. He lives in West Barnstable, Massachusetts, with his wife, artist Sarah Son.
